Children play with Ideas!

Katz, C. Accumulation, excess, childhood: Towards a counter-topography of risk and waste

(a) In her 2011 article, Dr. Cindi Katz presents an interesting and thought-provoking theory for analyzing the current trends and causes of social injustices. Katz uses powerful and targeted language to make her points. For example, terms like “symptomatic silences”, “naturalized struggles”, “braided class”, “disposable futures”, “cannibalizing labor”, and “thick bloody integument” are all indicative of the visceral response she targets in her readers.

Katz’ theory of unjust social reproduction describes three major components:

1) Neoliberal capitalism and its overaccumulation crisis. Within this constituent, Katz focuses on how responsibility has shifted from the state to the individual, which enables blame for poverty to be designated to the “self-sufficient self.” Furthermore, dispossession (which leads to social reproduction) is accomplished via privatizing common resources.

2) Childhood as spectacle, is the term that Katz uses to explain that under the neoliberal agenda, childhood is seen as “a commodity, as ornament and as waste.” In this sense, children have little value in their present state.

3) Children as waste. There are several ways in which children are wasted: school to prison pipeline, the militarization of youth, and extremely/debilitating labor.

To me, the most significant and eye-opening component of Katz’ theory is the explicit connection between children’s play time and the potential change of society. Since children play in ways which are imaginative and therefore question world structures, there are opportunities for children (which eventually will grow up) to recognize that ALL social constructs are also made up and flexible. She writes: “Playing at something has a fugitive or fleeting aspect that can spark a recognition that even the original is made up - a performance - and might be made different.” Lastly, I find myself in complete agreement with her theoretical lens through which childhood with its “revolutionary imagination” is a pivotal time of promise rather than its current appreciation as waste.

(b) As a researcher, I am interested in science education as a conduit for social justice. When Katz describes children’s play as an avenue for rethinking social constructs (and therefore, reality for humans) I see a parallel with science education which holds true potential for changing students’ ideas about our world. In thinking about the significance of challenging social constructs by using science, I am reminded of Carl Sagan when he wrote: “Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.” As well as Neil Degrasse Tyson when he said: “a scientist is just a kid who never grew up.” Both of them capture the essence of curiosity and wonder - both essential components of playing. Analyzing the ways in which Katz’ ideas connect with my research interests, I can connect the wasted potential of my students with the social reproduction of classes. Science with its specialized language and demands for submission while learning it, is usually oppressive to the type of students I serve. On the other hand, if students can appreciate that scientific knowledge is not culminating, but instead ongoing and dynamic, then students can begin to see that they too can utilize its approaches to not only understand the natural world, but also the social constructs which dictate much of our daily lives.

Lastly, Katz warning about wasted childhoods: "We are all in this together and the loss of anyone's creativity or creative potential is a tragedy of the commons, a loss to our common future." is a reminder that we don’t need women and minorities in the sciences just because it is politically correct, but more importantly, we need them because they have a different experiential filter which will see problems and solutions that are out of the reach of those people (wealthy white men) who traditionally have had access to science.
Here is Dr. Tyson addressing women in science: 

Lastly, just for fun: Racism in schools: